Chouara Tannery, Fes (must see)

At the heart of the Medina, the Chouara Tannery delivers one of Fes’s most unforgettable sights—and smells.

From early morning, this place snaps into motion. Water pours through openings that once belonged to nearby houses, rooftops fill with skins laid out to dry, and below, men wade knee-deep in circular vats that look more like a medieval alchemist’s laboratory than a working factory. Between dyes and pigeon dung, hides are scrubbed, soaked, and turned, while the vats cycle through their traditional colour order: turmeric yellow, poppy red, indigo blue, mint green, and finally black, drawn from antimony. It’s intense, a little shocking, and impossible to look away.

What makes Chouara even more striking is how little it has changed. Aside from the odd modern rinsing machine, the tannery still operates pretty much as it did in the 16th century, when Fes overtook Spanish Córdoba as a leading centre of leather production.

The working structure is equally old-fashioned. Foremen supervise tightly organized guilds, and specific tasks—soaking, scraping, dyeing—are passed down within families. Everyone knows their role, and everyone sticks to it. This continuity gives the place a strange authority, as if time itself has agreed not to interfere.

There’s an undeniable beauty in the patterns, the colours, and the choreography of work, but also a faint sense of discomfort. You’re watching hard physical labour up close, often while standing shoulder to shoulder with visitors leaning over railings, phones and cameras at the ready. The tannery invites admiration, curiosity, and a moment of self-awareness, all at once.

To get a clear view, you’ll usually head upstairs into one of the leather shops overlooking the vats. A small tip is expected, and you’ll likely be handed a sprig of mint—not as a souvenir, but as practical equipment. Hold it close, take a breath, and look down. Few places offer such a raw, living snapshot of how Fes has worked, traded, and endured for centuries.